SYDNEY — Are we for real in all this talk about saving the world from pollution? Just as Australia announces it will slash carbon emissions, it prepares to flood the world with carbon-belching coal.
True, no country is immune from hypocrisy when it comes to fighting global warming. But resources-rich Australia seems to be caught in a double bind. We are the world's biggest exporter of energy-producing, carbon-heavy coal and we are setting costly new world-beating laws to slash our own pollution.
Not that Canberra politicians, like their counterparts worldwide, are immune from double talk. Still, this time, they are in big trouble trying to sell Australian taxpayers a bold scheme for cutting industry's carbon emissions that will cost consumers billions of dollars in added prices. At the same time multinational mining giants are announcing multibillion dollar construction of coal mines here.